


Wait For Me

by ClaireKat



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Ahhhhhhhh, F/M, I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WHILE HE WAS THERE WITH HER, One Shot, and she had to do this, but also fluff, finally my own interpretation of what Lan Fan went through while Ling was away fighting, mmmmmmm this scene means so much to me, pretty angsty tbh, this was so emotional, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 01:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4901095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaireKat/pseuds/ClaireKat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ling and Lan Fan are on the run from the trailing Homunculi in the heart of Central, and Lan Fan’s arm has been damaged beyond repair…she knows that she has to do something about it, or else she and her lord aren’t going to make it out alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wait For Me

**Author's Note:**

> I realized I had never written my own interpretation of what probably happened when Lan Fan cut off her arm, so here it is! Trigger warnings for like…gore and blood and stuff, girl cut off her own arm lol so I tried to describe it pretty realistically. I’ve been rewatching Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood because I clearly like pain, and LingFan has been my OTP from that show for like…a really long time??? So I really wanted to write some LingFan lol there may be more to come. I hope you enjoy!

The pain was unreal…of course most of this felt like it wasn’t real, like it wasn’t happening. Lan Fan’s vision blurred in and out, her perception of reality slipping away bit by bit as the seconds passed and more blood drained from her wound. She noticed that the blood was making a trail…stupid, impractical, why hadn’t Ling noticed yet? Perhaps he had noticed, but he was just too panicked too do anything about it. That was certainly plausible, considering the life and death situation that they had both willingly stumbled into. Ugh, why hadn’t she reacted more quickly, why hadn’t she done _more?_ If only she had been more primed for the fight, this wouldn’t have happened, and she wouldn’t be such a burden now. She wouldn’t be putting her lord’s life in danger simply by existing, by expecting him to do something about it…then again, that expectation was his own. Lan Fan wanted him to abandon her, and their enemy had already suggested it…besides, what _could_ Ling do anyway? She knew that there was nothing.

This situation was fruitless, it was hopeless. She was nothing more than dead weight; soon she knew that that description would be true enough. But Ling was stubborn, Ling was unbelievably idealistic. He stuck to his own set of rules and didn’t break them, no matter what. His honor and his reputation were on the line, even if such things were only to be judged by Ling himself. There was no way that Lan Fan was going to be able to convince him to abandon her, no matter how hard she tried. She was starting to believe that even if she died, he would cling to her useless form as though she was something important, something that even deserved his worry or mourning. He would carry her lifeless vessel back to Xing come hell or high water. There was no way that she could allow herself to cause her lord that kind of pain and suffering, that she would ever be able to rest in any world, this or the next, if she knew that she was putting him through such a strenuous trial. The fact that she was already weighing him down, unable to help, unable to defend her lord in this little game of cat and mouse was enough to make her sick.

“My lord, please…I’m of no use to you now, you have to abandon me, you have to ensure your own safety, your own escape!”

Just as she had assumed, Ling wasn’t going to listen to anything she had to say. He recited one of his favorite sayings, reminding her once again how vehement he was about not abandoning anyone, especially any of his own people, his own subjects. Lan Fan knew that she was dedicated to Ling, that she would do anything for him, that she would give her life for him and more, but surely she wasn’t as worthy as even in the lowliest of his subjects to be considered by him. Either way, she was in no shape to argue in this state, or even to convince him that she would be okay if he took off on his own. They both knew that this wasn’t true and her heart ached at the thought of Ling hurting simply because of her almost nonexistent self-consideration. Regardless of how either of them felt, the drastic nature of the situation they were in didn’t change, and Lan Fan had to find a way to at least get her lord out of this alive…and that meant that she was going to have to make it out of this too.

She watched as her limp arm continued to rain down blood on the street below, right on Ling’s heels, cursing silently as she realized that she felt pain from the arm but nothing else. That bastard that had attacked her had done something, had cut off some vital nerve that connected the sensory and motor systems of her arm; it was completely limp and unusable to her now. The longer that she stared at the disappointing appendage, the more that she began to recall another imperative situation where someone had used their useless, damaged arm to escape being killed…her fight with the Amestrian boy, the one with the automail arm. He had detached his arm in an attempt to save his own life and used the discarded limb to set a trap for Lan Fan, an occasion that she still did not look back upon with much fondness. Now she was glad to recall such an event; the memory was able to spark an idea in her, an idea that she was quite confident would work to absolve both she and her lord from their current predicament.

Setting her jaw, she worked to remove one of her spare kunai from her collar, working it out of its holding place and positioning it in her hand for the perfect strike. She could hear Ling’s muffled fussing, her vision blurring more out of focus the longer that she waited to act. She knew that she had to do something to take care of the wound now, and she knew that this strike could very well be the thing that sent her into the black abyss. But she couldn’t go to such a place, she couldn’t lose consciousness…she couldn’t do that to her young lord. Preparing herself to take whatever pain she was about to endure with stride, steeling herself to hold onto her last string of consciousness no matter what occurred, Lan Fan closed her eyes and sliced clean through her arm with all the force she could muster.

She wanted to scream so badly. The pain was astronomical. Lan Fan wasn’t sure if she really could retain consciousness, as much as she wanted to, as the pain fogged her head and made the world feel like it was spinning. Everything her eyes took in was multiplied and fuzzy, and she noticed after a moment that Ling had stopped moving and set her down. He had ducked off into one of the side alleys that led back out onto the main streets, and every part of him seemed to be overflowing with stress and concern.

Lan Fan clenched her teeth again and did what she could to finish the job, letting out a tiny yelp but mostly burying her pain filled moans in her tightly closed mouth. Blood pooled over her tongue, her mind turning into a puddle of muted pain and intense confusion. She leaned over to helplessly vomit what blood and other bodily contents currently resided within her, unsure if what she had done was even going to turn out to be useful. The pain that resonated from her pressing her bloody shoulder against the building almost sent her into the darkness, but Ling pulled her back, literally pulling her into his lap as she heard the tearing of fabric and felt the painful pressure of something soft and warm being wrapped across her chest.  She could do almost nothing in this state…if nothing else, she needed to be coherent enough to explain to Ling what she needed him to do for this plan to succeed.

“Lan Fan, what were you thinking, why did you do that?” His voice was frantic, clearly on the edge of hysterics, and Lan Fan knew that she had to pull herself together. She had to regain enough strength to make this work, to calm him, to ensure that he survived. Her lord was everything to her, and despite everything that she had been through in the past few minutes, he was still her number one priority. All the pain in the world could never measure up to Ling in importance to Lan Fan, even if the pain was all her own. “Your arm…and all this blood. Lan Fan, Lan Fan please! Why did you do this, was the pain really that great? You didn’t have to do this, you shouldn’t have done this, I can’t get you to a doctor right now…Lan Fan, if you bleed out…no, please…”

Tears. The prince was actually shedding tears over his worthless, unimportant subordinate, his lowly servant. Lan Fan’s head slowly cleared as she realized that her lord was actually shedding tears over her, so distraught with her state that he was actually succumbing to such intense, pitiful emotions. She had done this to him; her decision, her body, her incompetence in fighting with that monster of a man…all of this was her fault, and to top it all off, her prince was now crying on her behalf.

Lan Fan attempted to sit up, shoving off Ling’s arms as he attempted to keep her horizontal. She knew that it was against her code, against the code of her clansmen and her position, but she had to do something to get Ling back on track. She cupped her prince’s cheek tenderly, wiping away some of his tears with her thumb as she did her best to rustle up the most realistic smile she could muster despite the aching pain from her shoulder and the fogginess of her head. She leaned forward to press her forehead to his, feeling tears uncontrollably begin to stream down her own face as she confronted all of her failures head on.

She was the reason that her prince’s life was in danger, the one person she was supposed to protect…and now she had made him cry. She was comforting him, she was overstepping the boundaries that had been set for both of them since birth, steamrolling over the rules of her position to do something as inappropriate as this. Physical contact, emotional healing…Lan Fan wasn’t permitted to provide any of this to her prince. And yet here she was, trying to salvage what she could of this disastrous situation in a last ditch effort to save her beloved’s life.

“My lord, I’m alright. I’m going to be alright…you wrapped the wound; surely I can’t lose too much more blood now. It’s a quick fix, and you’re right, it most likely won’t hold for very long…but we don’t need it to. I had an idea, and I had to take the chance, otherwise we were never going to get out of here alive. Now, please my lord, I need you to listen to me. I heard a dog somewhere in this area. We need to find that animal, and then we can continue with the rest of the plan. Do you trust me?”

The conviction in Ling’s eyes was unmistakable. He rose to his feet, helping Lan Fan get back on hers as well. She stumbled a bit into his side, her legs still a little shaky from the pain and the shock of the procedure that she had just performed on herself as well as the dizziness and the vomiting. Lan Fan was probably in the worst shape she had ever been in, but even if she was at rock bottom, she wasn’t going to let that stop her from helping get Ling to the top. Her strength returned as Ling allowed her to lean against him, and soon enough they were able to locate the animal that she had heard barking not too far away down another one of the nearby alleyways in the dense maze of this city.

She provided Ling with the other materials needed to attach her arm to the mutt’s back, finishing the job just in time to sense the presence of their assailant starting to close in. Her eyes flashed around frantically, and luckily enough she was able to locate a manhole cover that no doubt led into the city’s sewers. With Ling’s help the two slipped down into the tunnels, pausing a moment to hear the serious footsteps of their pursuer fade away as he followed their false trail. Lan Fan felt a few more tears pour from her eyes as she realized that she had done it, _they_ had done it…and her lord was safe once again. Even in the wake of such personal failure, Lan Fan had pulled herself together. She had proven herself strong enough to do what she had to do for her lord, no matter the consequences, and this small victory was enough to encourage her to keep going.

“Lan Fan, we have to get you out of here, we have to get you to a doctor. Your arm is still—”

“No, my lord, please. Do not let your concern for me cloud your judgement.” Lan Fan attempted to keep her voice from trembling too much as she leaned against the sewer wall with her good arm, trying to catch her breath as the effects of the shock began to take a toll on her body. “Do what you have to do, don’t let the Homunculus get away. Please, after all we’ve been through, after we’ve come all this way…locate the Elric brothers. Finish this. For your people. For your kingdom. For all of us, please. Finish the job…I’ll be here waiting.”

Ling observed Lan Fan silently, and she assumed that he was preparing some sort of speech to explain to her just why he wasn’t going to do that. She prepared her own rebuttal no matter what Ling’s apparent argument was going to be, and in the face of preparing to deliver it Ling suddenly pressed a soft, affectionate kiss to her cheek. Lan Fan felt the remaining blood in her body all pool to her face as Ling parted from her after a final, lingering embrace.

“Wait for me. I _will_ be back for you, Lan Fan. Just wait for me.”

As she watched Ling retreat deeper into the system of tunnels, Lan Fan was left with nothing but her own fatigue, confusion, and troublesome mixture of conflicting emotions. She didn’t know how to process what had happened in the matter of the last couple of hours, much less the last few seconds. She was too tired and spent to bother trying to work it out, so she decided the best thing to do was just to follow her lord’s orders. Yes, she was going to wait here for him…he was the only thing that she was living for, after all. Without him in her life, Lan Fan really was nothing; she was born to be his vassal, born to live by his side, and nothing more. She considered herself infinitely lucky that the man she had been born to serve seemed just as intent on knowing that he wanted her service, and more.


End file.
